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City of…snails

After just a few more posts I’ll be all caught up on our European adventures and can get on with more current activities – it’s bittersweet.

As our time in Germany got short we felt pressure to do, see, eat, etc. everything. But at the same time, traveling is really tiring (I know, I know – it’s a First World Problem if ever there was one.)

I spent a lot of time conducting research before each trip so that we knew exactly where to go, how to get there, and what to do once we arrived. Most of our trips had a specific goal and usually a corresponding schedule. I think we selected this destination because as snotty as it sounds, traveling to Paris was easy. We knew where to stay, how to maneuver the city, what we wanted to eat, and come on: it’s Paris for goodness sake!

We checked in to our hotel and then practically sprinted to Cafe Central for their fantastic hamburger sauce.

We stayed just off the Rue Cler and I love everything about that little street:

We spent the first day wandering aimlessly from landmark to landmark, stopping for wine along the way.

Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile

Louis Vuitton

Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées

Les Invalides

The next day we ventured to Versailles and toured casually – we used the audio guides but really just stopped whenever something seemed interesting rather than trying to see every single thing (which isn’t possible anyway, right?)

And when we got hungry? We decided maybe someday we’d return…and we left. Here’s to us for being carefree! We ate at Helio’s Pub, a cute little place that let Big D order items not on the menu. I had my first of many escargot servings:

That evening we wandered around the Latin Quarter and unintentionally strolled all the way back to our hotel – about four miles.

Musée du Louvre

Musée d’Orsay

We decided to spend Sunday morning at the Les Puces de Saint-Ouen – a flea market we briefly visited on a previous trip – and the afternoon/evening at the Orsay. I even bought tickets for the museum online so we wouldn’t have to wait in line. It turned out we only saw a tiny fraction of the market on our first visit and had no idea the maze of stores and stalls is HUGE. We spent most of the day there and rather than rushing, we never did use those museum tickets. They’re valid for a year so if you’re headed to Paris, I’ll send them to you! (Photography is generally prohibited at the market, so all I have is what’s in my mind’s eye.)

We filled the free time that afternoon with… escargot of course! And wine. And cheese. And whatever these are.

And then we roamed around the First Arrondissement with a stop at my personal mecca, Goyard – closed on Sunday.

This guy got a ticket from policemen on Rollerblades. How embarrassing!

Monday brought our trip to a close. We checked out of our tiny hotel and dragged our bags to the Trocadéro just so I could try to get the photo below, which required sneaking my glass out of the restaurant, across a few busy lanes of traffic, and into the center of a roundabout. Big D said I looked like I was playing a game of human Frogger.

This photo didn’t turn out exactly as I hoped. But really, I can not complain.